Concepts in the Paradox

I’ve been doing research on the state of the various transit systems in the bay area lately. This time around I took a look at eBart, the Bart expansion from Pittsburg to Byron.

First of all, I think any expansion of Bart is a good idea — I’ve felt for some time now that Bart is a good system: always on time, reduces suburban traffic, and joins together Bay Area economic centers. It has it’s problems, like not always being the cleanest thing in the world, and it is sort of expensive. In the end I still feel Bart is an extremely good deal for a single traveler, though for a family it can be pricer than a cab, depending on how far they are traveling.

All of that said, I must wonder out loud why it takes 5 years to build a 23 mile route? Actually, according to their timeline, construction is a whopping 2.5 years! What are they doing for the other 2 and a half? “Scoping” and “Right of Way”. Does it really take 5 years to do all this? I’m not a project manager by any extent of the imagination, but maybe 24 months would be enough time for only 23 miles! It certainly doesn’t take that long for a freeway.

I won’t even ask why they didn’t start on this project until 2005; over 30 years since Bart was put into revenue service. Is the price of gas starting to hurt or something? Too many cars on your 6 lane freeways?

I finally got around to putting my Mac Mini, which has been sitting disused in a box for 2 months, up on Craigslist. I made up a nice little ad, slapped on a price of $450, and immediately got one buyer, and only one buyer, who was interested. Expecting another flake out, I told this guy to pick it up ASAP or I’ll sell it to the first guy who comes to my door. “Sure”, he says, “I’ll be over tomorrow morning”.

Since I had just given some stranger my address and phone number, I figured I’d see if this “Cliff Stoll” guy had any Google juice. And well, uh, I guess he has Wikipedia juice too.

When he showed up, he didn’t even ask me to boot the little Mac up. He said he’d looked at this very blog, decided that since I ran Linux I was trustworthy, and handed me the cash.

I was now $450 richer. So what to do with $450?

I went to the Freewheel Bike Shop on Valencia and asked what they recommended for $450, and they recommended the Marin Muriwoods 20 urban bike. I took it for a ride up the block, in what I can only describe as “frightening” San Francisco traffic (really, is it possible for people to drive any worse?), and loved it. I bought it with a helmet and ulock, and now I have one less way to get fucked by Muni in the morning:

I keep hearing about this third street light rail project, so I thought that I’d take a drive and see what was down that “up and coming” line, as all the realtors put it. Starting from the ball park, I headed south along the rail. I must say, the downtown area is pretty impressive near the ball park. Clean buildings, good transit, plenty of shops and places to eat. Past the bridge is another story though; it is parking lots, empty fields and rotting warehouses for miles.

The light rail stops look modern and clean, something that I was very happy to see compared to the decay that surrounds the street. I’m not entirely sure why there is a light rail track down to Bayview; the whole area consists of closed businesses, cheap and uninspired looking houses, and shady characters passed out on the sidewalk. At one point in my journey I actually came by some shacks that were lined up along the road where obviously people had been living.

My understanding is that on the other side of the 280 near Hunter’s Point there is some nice housing in areas called “Dog Patch”, which I hoped to take a look at it. I was too taken aback by how depressed the area was to go exploring any further. One can only hope that the re-introduction of light rail into the area will be an economic boom to the area. I don’t know how many decades have passed since the rail along third street to Hunter’s Point was removed, but it had to be a crushing blow to an area that also lost it’s now-toxic naval yard.